Passages

Best-selling novelist Toni Morrison, 62, on Oct. 7 became the first African-American and eighth woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature. Morrison, who teaches writing at Princeton, will receive $825,000 from the Swedish Academy. She is the author of, among other works, six novels about black life in America, including Beloved, which won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize.

Cyril Cusack, 82, one of Ireland's most prolific stage and screen actors, died of a motor neuron disease at his London home on Oct. 7. A member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, as well as Dublin's Abbey Theater, Cusack appeared in such films as The Taming of the Shrew (1967) and My Left Foot (1989). His eldest daughter, actress Sinead Cusack, 45, is married to actor Jeremy Irons, 45.

Trump: The Baby. Actress Maria Maples, 29, and real estate tycoon Donald Trump, 47, became the parents of their first child, Tiffany Ariana (7 lbs. 7 ozs.), on Oct. 13 in West Palm Beach, Fla. The couple have not set a wedding date. The Donald, who was present during delivery, has three other children with ex-wife Ivana.

Evening Shade's Marilu Henner, 41, and her husband, director Robert Lieberman, 46, are anticipating the arrival of their firstborn in late April. Lieberman has two children from a previous marriage....

Kennedy cousin Anthony Shriver, 28, and his wife, Alina, also 28, are expecting their first child in January. She has a son, Teddy, 5, from a previous marriage. Shriver, whose sister is Maria Shriver, 38, heads the philanthropic foundation Best Buddies.

Actor-director Bill Bixby, 59, married Judith Kliban, 44, widow of cat cartoonist Bernard Kliban, on Oct. 3 in San Francisco. Bixby, who has suffered from prostate cancer since 1991, has been married twice before.

R&B singer Wilson Pickett, 52, was sentenced on Oct. 1 to one year in jail and five years' probation for striking and injuring an 86-year-old pedestrian in Englewood, N.J., while driving drunk in 1992. A superior court judge in Hackensack, N.J., also ruled that Pickett must pay a $5,000 fine, undergo treatment for alcoholism and do 200 hours of community service.

William Nygaard, 50, publisher of the Norwegian translation of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie's 1989 novel that was deemed blasphemous by the Ayatollah Khomeini, was shot three times outside his Oslo home on Oct. 11. Nygaard underwent surgery to remove a bullet lodged in his spine and is expected to recover. Although police had no suspects in the shooting, they did not rule out the possibility that Nygaard was the third victim of the Islamic campaign against Rushdie and his book. Two years ago the novel's Japanese translator was stabbed to death and its Italian translator seriously injured in a knifing. Rushdie. 46, has been living in hiding since the ayatollah put a $2 million price tag on his head four years ago.